


Working Relationship

by DuelCast



Category: Original Work
Genre: Elves, F/F, Fantasy, Half-orc, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Violence, Swords & Sorcery, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22646497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuelCast/pseuds/DuelCast
Summary: When her adventuring party hires a new elvish mage, half-orc mercenary Kerry Bloodshore has some doubts about their new recruit. Then again, maybe this job won't go as badly as she fears.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Working Relationship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WolffyLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolffyLuna/gifts).



Kerry honestly didn't understand the big to-do about elves. The way that everyone else stood in awe over their mere existence had always baffled her, and the rare moments when they deigned to climb out of their trees and their caves and their ivory towers did little to change her mind. Oh, she knew of their grand reputations, of course: she's heard scholars express envy over the ancient knowledge they apparently kept hoarded all to themselves, while the few soldiers blessed enough to fight by their side (or unfortunate to find themselves at the opposite end of their bows and their blades) found it impossible to keep their mouths shut about their grace on the battlefield. Pah. Anybody could be a genius at combat and cantrips if they had all the time in the world.  
  
Then again, their latest companion didn't seem to be a genius at anything. Though, perhaps she was being a little unfair; after all, it's not as if Lia was a braggart, promising to bring them the sun and the moon with a flick of her wrist. She did claim to have a particular talent for charms and divination when they first met at the tavern a few days ago, but was otherwise disinterested in playing up her position as an elvish magister.  
  
No, the only one who bragged at all about her was their fearless leader, Sister Diane Brightstone: champion of Slaterock Cathedral, healer of the Blackroot Scourge, and living proof that sacred vows are completely optional if one smites enough liches in their lifetime.  
  
"So," whispered the good sister as she sidled besides Kerry. "What do you think?"  
  
Kerry looked up to the sky.  
  
"I think that we're all going to get drenched if we don't pick up the pace."  
  
Diane glowered up at her before she tried to elbow her in the ribs. However, few humans stood as tall as Kerry, so she only succeeded in giving her a light prod to the hip.  
  
"I'm not talking about the weather, you salt-drenched oaf! I'm talking about our _new friend._ What do you think about her, hmn?"  
  
Kerry sighed as she looked ahead at Lia from her position at the rear. Her long, curly white hair bounced with every step she took, and even though she was supposed to be sniffing out the astral trail left by the Cryptlord's sigil, she kept chatting away with Varri as she had all morning. Though, chatting at Varri might be a better way to put it. The old dwarf was as stingy with his words as he was with his coin, but he took Lia's rambling about this herb or that star in stride, giving the occasional grunt in response as he continued to watch the front for bandits and beasts.  
  
"Perky," she said, her tone flat. That didn't stop a grin from creeping on Diane's face, and Kerry quickly added, "I meant her personality, by the way."  
  
Diane merely looked up at her, her hand touched to her chest as her eyes went wide with mock offence. She might have even appeared innocent despite what Kerry knew of her, were it not for the absolutely wicked grin that followed.  
  
"Oh? And whatever would I be talking about if not her personality, my dear Kerry?"  
  
"Don't play games with me - I know exactly what you meant, and what sort of person you really are underneath that habit."  
  
"Yes - a simple, modest woman of the cloth, dedicated to spreading the love and warmth of the Goddess wherever I go."  
  
"Hmph! Is that what you're calling it now? 'Sides, I don't recall you being that holy back in Sapphire City."  
  
"Nor do I recall you being so above it all when we took refuge in Blackport. Or did you forget that little rendez-vous?"  
  
"I-"  
  
Kerry's cheeks flushed a deep teal, and Diane's eyes closed shut as she continued her reverie.  
  
"Ah yes, I remember now. Both of us drenched to the bone, huddling together in that old shack... my robes drying by the fire, and you nibbling down my neck with those cute little tusks of yours..."  
  
"That...that was different!"  
  
"I know, I know. _Never mix business with pleasure_ ," she said, her voice lowered in a poor imitation of her companion's. "But you were certainly quick to act once our business was settled - and you've been nothing but business since then!"  
  
"Somebody has to be."  
  
"Look, Kerry. I just think it would be terrible-"  
  
"Stop."  
  
"-absolutely awful-"  
  
"I know what you're going to say."  
  
"-if you've been pouring your heart and soul into this adventuring business just because you were heartbroken over little old me!"  
  
"Excuse me?!"  
  
Diane looked at her with the same look of mock innocence she had earlier, and said, "Pardon me, I thought you knew what I was going to say. Then again, perhaps we wouldn't need a diviner if-"  
  
Kerry interrupted her with a snarl and, her voice kept at a low hiss, said, "I did not take this job just so you could pester me all damned day. You might have everyone else from here to the Onyx Coast planting their lips on your holier-than-thou ass, but I don't need your coin, I don't need your thoughts on my love life - past or present! - and I sure don't need you wasting any more of my time! Understood?!"  
  
"Stop."  
  
That was not Diane who spoke, but Lia. She held up a delicate lavender hand and Kerry's chest tightened as she wondered just how much of that argument she just overheard. If she heard anything at all, though, she had no comment, and simply pointed right.  
  
"It's here," she said, her voice breathless. "I"m certain of it!"  
  
Kerry furrowed her brow as she glanced down the overgrown trail Lia directed them towards.  
  
"The Giant's Tear? Those falls were picked clean ages ago."  
  
"And abandoned ages ago," Lia added. "Once all the old relics were dug up. But the caves that were used by the old Thieves' Guild are still as sturdy as ever, and now that all the treasure hunters have moved on to more, ah, interesting locales..."  
  
"...then nobody will notice if a group of cultists moves in," Diane finished, her brown eyes narrowed as she frowned.  
  
"I don't know," Kerry said as she shook her head. "It's..."  
  
The rest of the party looked at her expectantly, and she squared up her shoulders as she sputtered out, "I Just have a bad feeling about this, alright?"  
  
Diane cleared her thought, and replied, "It's not that I don't trust your instincts, Kerry - really, I do - but this is the best lead we've had in a long while. It's worth investigating, hmn? But, if you have any better ideas..."  
  
Damn. She had her there. Kerry sighed, and with a resigned shrug, said, "Not really."  
  
"It's settled, then! Lead the way, Lia."  
  


* * *

  
  
If there was one thing that Kerry's instincts were right about, it was this damnable rain.  
  
Diane and Lia had their own enchantments that left them warm and dry, and their robes untouched by the rising mud. Now, they were not so stingy as to let their companions suffer, and Kerry and Varri enjoyed similar blessings, so long as they stayed close by their respective spellcasters.  
  
Which worked mostly fine, but left Kerry's arm absolutely, positively soaked.  
  
"There's no need to be shy," Diane said, as smug as a nun could be, and while there was not a speck of mud or rainwater on her she practically oozed with sleaze. "I'd be happy to keep you cozy and warm."  
  
"Not if you were the last woman alive."  
  
"Oh, don't be so sour, Kerry. Just look at yourself! You're getting absolutely drenched."  
  
"Not as drenched as me," Varri added. It was true: his beard dripped all down his armor and onto his boots.  
  
That made Kerry and Diane stop dead in their tracks. Then, in unison:  
  
"Lia!"  
  
They both sprinted forward, mud splashing against Kerry's legs every time she outpaced Diane and her blessing against the storm. One minute Lia was there, right in front of their eyes, and the next- damn it! Kerry and Diane and Varri, they were supposed to be professionals, they should have been keeping an eye on her, green and new to adventuring as she was, instead of getting into some... some stupid fight with her stupid ex! Well, what's done is done. There was one thing in their favor: the trail Lia led them down only ends in one place, a small lake that the once great Giant's Tear feeds into. If they're fortunate, whatever strange magic Lia was tracking didn't take her off the path.  
  
It was not long until the three of them arrived at the lakes' flooded shore, and Kerry heard Diane whisper a prayer of gratitude to her goddess as Lia's head rose from the water. While Lia gasped and panted for air, a million questions flooded Kerry's mind: how did she leave them so quickly? How did she manage to swim to the middle of the lake in the time it took to chase her down? And what in the hundred hells was she doing out here, anyway? Oblivious to her concerns, Lia beamed at them and waved, before she shouted something inaudible.  
  
"What?!" Varri yelled back, his gruff voice hoarse. Kerry wondered how he expected her to hear him from the shore, when she realized: ah. Elf ears.  
  
"I said," Lia repeated, her voice amplified by some spell or another, "I found it!"  
  
Lia raised her fist triumphantly, her hand glowing with ancient magic. However, she was the only one who was eager to celebrate. Diane's already pale face blanched and Varri went as still as the stone he was carved from. while Kerry gripped her battleaxe and shouted, "It's a trap!"  
  
At that moment the ground rumbled beneath them, right before a horde of corpses rose from the water. There were nearly two dozen in number, their skin grey and their bodies bloated; fresh kills, from the looks of it, and Kerry did not want to think about where they came from. About half of them began their slow approach by the shore, their bodies held together by the foul magic that brought them to life, while the other half drifted towards Lia - poor Lia, who was currently swimming for dear life towards the stump of a crumbled statue that jutted out of the water.  
  
"Varri, stay with me on the shore," Diane said, her tone firm. "Kerry, you're to retrieve Lia - do you remember the Dryad Swamp?"  
  
"Of course I do. Are you thinking of what we did for the duke's son?"  
  
"Exactly," Diane said with a nod. "Now go!"  
  
She pointed her hands towards Kerry's feet and whispered a prayer, suffusing her boots with a golden light before Kerry dashed towards the lake. It was always a strange thing, walking on water, and an even stranger thing to run across it. It wasn't like glass or ice like some would expect, but instead there was an uncomfortable give, like a bubble that threatened to burst with every step one took. However, while Kerry did not have any faith in Diane's goddess, she did trust her magic, and she ran without fear as she cleaved her weapon through a revenant's head.  
  
One down, only eleven to go. Lia pulled herself up on what was once part of an ancient warrior's leg, and the living corpses swarmed around the ruin, threatening to climb up after her. Kerry was close enough to see the elf's eyes widen with fear, and with a loud bellow, she cleaved another body through the back.  
  
"Hold on!" she shouted as she sprinted forward with unnatural speed. "I'm almost there!"  
  
Kerry had no idea what comfort her words brought, if any, and she's too blinded by the rain and a new splash of ichor to see Lia's face. That was three, now, and she took another step forward only to scream out as she felt a bony hand to grab her ankle. It yanked at her with the strength of an ogre, threatening to break Diane's spell with brute force alone. Kerry swung down on instinct, and felt its grip grow slack as her axe carved through bone and muscle.  
  
Four. That was four now.  
  
Kerry wiped the water and grime from her eyes and looked towards Lia's refuge. The revenants were climbing up the ruin now and Kerry snarled, but Lia looked serene, almost. The fear that Kerry saw earlier was now gone, and she rose to her feet and held her arms high, eyes closed as she chanted over the wind.  
  
Then she shrieked.  
  
This was not a cry, this was not a shout, but an ungodly, bloodcurdling shriek, as loud and piercing as any banshee that haunted the highlands. Kerry was frozen to the spot, as were the revenants before they fled for what little was left of their lives. Two of them fled into the path of Kerry's axe, staining it once more with old blood. Three of them descended back under the depths of the lake, back to the embrace of their watery grave. And then final three, perhaps the most unfortunate of them all, fled to the shores near Diane and Varri. The two of them waited patiently to greet them with a beam of holy light and a flurry of crossbow bolts, the same way they greeted the shambling corpses who tried to surround them on dry land.  
  
With her strange magic now spent, Lia's arms dropped at her side like lead weights. She stumbled forward, and yelped as she slipped off the ruin... and into Kerry's waiting arms. She blinked once, twice, three times before she stared up at Kerry, her lips parted and her silver eyes wide in disbelief, and remained silent as Kerry carried her back to the shore.  
  


* * *

  
"Stupid, stupid - argh!"  
  
The good news: Lia realized that she might have been a tad careless down at the lake. The bad news: she's decided to give her apology by way of screaming into a pillow.  
  
Kerry sighed and placed her hand on the back of Lia's shoulder. It was just the two of them in the inn room, now; Diane took the sigil Lia found to the town's church, while Varri decided to speak with his old contacts from the Thieves' Guild.  
  
"I"m not going to lie," Kerry said, "That was pretty - no, it was _absolutely_ reckless-"  
  
Lia groaned.  
  
"-but you weren't the only idiot back there. We all should have been keeping an eye on you - you're the greenhorn here. And gods know how Varri lost track of you..."  
  
"That really wasn't his fault," Lia said, her voice stiff.  
  
"What, you're saying it's not his fault he didn't see you run off?"  
  
"Well...I didn't exactly run, not really."  
  
"Wait, you-"  
  
Kerry's jaw dropped, and she glared at Lia, not sure if she should be awed or furious.  
  
"You teleported!"  
  
"Not on purpose!" Lia said, her hands raised up. "I was just thinking how nice it would be if we could just grab the sigil and go... you know, get back in town before the storm got any worse, and... well... there I was."  
  
"Hmph. And how many centuries did it take for you to master that little trick, huh?"  
  
Lia hesitated and bit her lip, before she turned on her side, away from Kerry's seat on the mattress.  
  
"...twenty."  
  
"Twenty centuries, and you still don't know how to control it?!"  
  
"No! I mean... I meant years."  
  
Lia's voice went soft, and she continued, "I meant years. I've only been studying magic for twenty years."  
  
Kerry gaped at Lia yet again, and then she did the only thing somebody could do: she laughed.  
  
Well, that got Lia up and out of her doldrums. She scrambled onto her knees, her cheeks flushed a deep aubergine, and she balled her hands into fists as she glared at Kerry.  
  
"It's not funny!" she spat back. "And twenty-five years is a perfectly respectable age for a mage, I'll have you know! You wouldn't be laughing at me if I was a human, or a gnome, or-"  
  
"Oh no, I'm not laughing at you," Kerry said, still wheezing. "It's just - after she first met up with you, Sister Diane couldn't stop crowing about it, going on and on about how she found some grand scholar straight from the Endless Isles...."  
  
"Well..." Lia smiled sheepishly, and said, "I might have left out a couple of details. But it got me the job, didn't it? Oh! But... but you aren't going to tell her, are you?"  
  
Kerry shook her head.  
  
"No - I mean, I do think that you should tell her. It would be better for all of us - you included - if we know what to expect from you. But I won't rat you out, so long as you don't run off and do anything stupid again. 'Sides, it's her own damn fault for making assumptions like that."  
  
"Mmn... she does that a lot, doesn't she?"  
  
Kerry went still for a moment, before she cleared her throat and rubbed the back of her head, a nervous chuckle leaving her throat.  
  
"You, uh, heard us bickering, didn't you?"  
  
"Just a little," she admitted. "You aren't upset about that, are you?"  
  
"Not really, no. I mean, it's a little embarrassing, but it's what we get for not keeping our mouths shut."  
  
"Well...good."  
  
Lia shifted forward and sat beside Kerry,her skirt hitched up, her bare thigh brushing against the soft cloth of Kerry's trousers as she leaned ever so slightly against her.  
  
"Good that you're not upset, I mean. I was a little afraid of what would happen after...."  
  
"After you bungled up the sigil?" Kerry asked with a raise of her brow.  
  
"Hey, that was a group bungling. You said so yourself."  
  
"That was before I knew that you could blip out of sight!" she said, letting out a laugh. "But I guess Diane could have asked you more about-"  
  
"Blipping?"  
  
"And a lot of things," Kerry added, poking her in the shoulder. "And you could have been more open-"  
  
"I know."  
  
"-and careful-"  
  
"I know!"  
  
"-and you still owe me a proper thank you!"  
  
"I-oh! Oh."  
  
Lia laughed nervously, and said, "Sorry. I guess that's another thing I... that I bungled. But..."  
  
She bit her lip again and glanced between Kerry and the door.  
  
"I have plenty of time for that now, right?"  
  
"Hmn? Time for what?"  
  
Lia stared at her, her silver eyes meeting Kerry's sea-green, and she leaned closer to whisper in Kerry's ear.  
  
"Time to thank you."  
  
Warmth rose up Kerry's neck, spreading to her face, and her heart pounded against her chest as she felt a soft hand rest on her knee. If she had any thoughts, they completely unraveled, spinning away into nothingness as Lia continued whispering, her voice hot against her ear.  
  
"We don't have to do anything," she said, her voice low. "Not if you don't want to. But I know that if I were you..."  
  
Her hand inched up, slowly, tortuously, her fingertips brushing against the inseam of Kerry's trousers as the muscles underneath twitched and flexed against Kerry's will.  
  
"...well...I wouldn't mind a chance to prove _Sister Diane_ wrong."  
  
Ah. So that's what she had heard. Kerry choked on her own breath, her body stiff as a statue, and while Lia stilled her wandering hand her breath was still warm against her skin. _This is stupid,_ Kerry thought as she bit her lip, her hands balled into fists. _You don't- You never fuck your teammates. You remember what happened the last time, don't you?_  
  
She remembered Diane, her skin slick with rainwater, still soaked from the storm. She remembered the screaming match a fortnight afterward, when Kerry found her in the arms of the girl from the chapel. She remembered the smirk on her lips and the glint in her eyes as she stared at her and said, in that sing-song voice of hers, _I'd hate it if you were still heartbroken..._  
  
"You know what," Kerry said, her voice breathless, "You're right. To hell with Diane."  
  
Lia smiled against her skin and pressed a soft kiss against her neck, and her soft whispers were replaced with a joyous shriek once Kerry grabbed her by the waist and tugged her onto her lap. She held the elf steady, one hand against her hip while the other one sneaked underneath her camisole, calloused fingers spread across the small of her back. This was still a stupid idea, Kerry told herself, but it was hard to be too bothered by it when there was a pair of soft thighs straddling her own. The voice of her good reason grew quieter as she ran her hand up Lia's spine, and she laughed quietly at the soft gasp that followed, relishing the way her back arched underneath her fingertips, and they stared at each other a moment longer before Kerry tilted her head and leaned in for a kiss. At first it was too soft, too careful; tusks always made kissing a tricky ordeal, and while most of the girls she had been with didn't seem to mind, she still found it difficult to abandon her caution. Lia, however, had no such concerns, and she pressed back insistently, breaking away only to kiss back with more force. She pressed her hand against Kerry's jaw, gently guiding her head _just so_ as they deepened the kiss, and just as her tongue darted forward - just enough to tempt, just enough to tease - she broke away, nibbling on Kerry's lip before letting go.  
  
_This elf is going to be the death of me,_ Kerry thought as she dived in for another kiss. Greedy fingers tugged at the hem of her undershirt, and Lia practically squirmed against her lap as Kerry yanked it up, breaking away from each other just long enough for her to pull it up and toss the damned thing across the room. Then again, in this line of work, she could definitely think of worse ways to go. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks for reading. This is the first original story I've written in a long time, and I hope you all enjoyed it. Unfortunately I wasn't able to include everything I wanted to this time, but if all goes as planned, there should be more Kerry and Lia in the future. ❤️


End file.
